Railway-switch



(No Model.)

J. B. CAREY.

Railway Switch.

No. 229,671. Patented Ju|y'6, 1880.

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UNITED STATES PATENT OFFIcn,

JOHN B. CAREY, OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

RAILWAY-SWITCH.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 229,671, dated July 6,188i).

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, JOHN B. CAREY, a citizen of the United States,residing at Boston, in the county of Suffolk and State of Massachusetts,have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Railway-Switches;and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exactdescription of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in theart to which it appertains to make and use the same, reference being hadto the accompanying drawings, and to letters or figures of referencemarked thereon, which form a part of this specification.

My present invention is an improvementupon that shown and described inLetters Patent of the United States issued to myself on the 2d day ofDecember, 1879, for railway-switches, which consists in the employment,in combination with the pivoted tongue of a switch, of a lever pivotedto the bed-plate of the switch at a point adjacent to the free end ofthe tongue and operating with thelatter to close itagainst the stress ofa suitable spring, which is com bined with the tongue to hold it open,the nose or forward end of the-lever being actuated by pulling theforward wheels of the car laterally of the track.

In mypatented switch above named the lever serves only to actuate thetongue of the switch in the act of opening the switch to the turnout, astop independent of the lever being employed to arrest the inwardmovement of the tongue when released from the pressure of the lever,while the lever itself is actuated by a presser-foot depending from theunder side of the car.

In my present switch I employ the pivoted tongue and the lever butIhavedispensed with the stop and the presser-foot and changed the relativepositions of the tongue and lever, so that the latter, in addition toits function of actuating the tongue, also constitutes the stop todetermine the inward movement of the tongue, while the lever, in lieu ofbein g actuated by the presser-foot, is actuated by the forward wheelsof the car as the latter is pulled to one side by the draft-animals.

Figure l of the drawings accompanying this specification represents, inisometric elevation, a railway-track turnout, and with tongue andApplication filed May 7, 1880.

(No model.)

lever embodying my improvements, whileFig. 2 is a vertical sectionthrough the tongue.

In these drawings the base-plate of theswitch is shown at A, itsmain-track-rail portion at B, and its swinging tongue at O, the pivot ofthis tongue being shown at D. D D represent the rails of themain track,and E E those of the siding.

The tongue 0 is recessed on its under side to contain a plate-spring, b,such spring being secured at one end to the pivot D and exerting thestress of its free end against the tongue to crowd the free end of thelatter inward and permit the main track to remain intact or open.

J in the drawings represents a lever disposed upon the top of theswitch-plate A, and pivoted at its center, or thereabout, to thebaseplate by a vertical pivot, 0, such pivot being situated near thefree end of the tongue, but at a point between such free end ofthetongue and the pivot of the latter, the rear end or tail, d, of thelever lying alongside of and abutting against the inner edge of thetongue at about the center of the latter or approximating thereto. Theopposite end or nose, (6, of the lever J is situated alongside of therail D of the main track, and is sloping or obliquely disposed withrespect to such rail, as shown atf, to permit of entrance of the flangesof the wheels upon one side the car, between the nose of the lever andthe rail.

The operation of this switch as applied to horse or street railways isas follows: Asacar approaches a siding or turnout onto which it is to beswitched, and as the front wheels of the car arrive opposite the flaringnose of the lever J, the car is pulled by the draft-animals toward theside of the track opposite thelever, the result being that the nose ofthe lever is forced inward toward the center of the track, therebycrowding its tail d and the free end of the switch-tongue in theopposite direction, and by so doing closes or isolates the main trackand opens the turnout, the tail d of the lever being of less height thanthe portion of the switch against which it abuts, in order that it maypresent no obstruction to the flanges of the wheels as the latter passalong the tongue. When the lever and tongue are in their normalposition-that is, when the main track is opentheir meeting faces areparallel; hence the pivot of the lever constitutes a stop to the inwardmovement of the tongue and to determine the extent to which it is movedby the flexure of its spring. When the car returns from the turnout tothe main track the dummy, socalled, upon the side of the track oppositethe tongue and lever before explained, diverts the car toward and uponthe main track, the wheels of theear upon the switch side crowding thetongue U outward against the main rail and permitting of passage of theflanges of' the wheels between such tongue and the leverJ. The length ofthe free end or nose of the lever .l is equal to or somewhat greaterthan the distance between the axles ot the cars, in order that the frontwheels of the ear in running from the main track to the turnout shallnot pass by the pivot of the lever until the rear ear-wheel has enteredbetween the lever and rail.

JOHN B. CAREY.

Witnesses:

WM. '1. ANDREWS, H. E. LODGE.

